Secondo quanto riferito, funzionari e leader aziendali russi sono frustrati dalle restrizioni di Internet ma hanno paura di dirlo a Putin

“Sources describe Putin as having a limited grasp of technology, leaving him reliant on the assessments of security officials.”

This is the absolute textbook definition of the “Dictator Trap.” When you spend two decades throwing anyone who delivers bad news out of an upper floor window, eventually nobody is left to tell you the truth.

So you end up with an aging, paranoid autocrat who probably doesn’t even know how to connect to Wi-Fi, completely at the mercy of whatever the FSB wants to feed him.

The detail about Russian officials and billionaires being forced to use the state backed messenger app “Max” is genuinely hilarious. Every single oligarch and politician in that country knows “Max” is just a giant, unencrypted FSB wiretap with a chat interface. They are trying to run billion dollar industries, but they are being forced to use the digital equivalent of a bugged rotary phone.

And the fact that Putin has dropped his public appearances by 25% just to avoid answering questions about the internet block shows how incredibly fragile his “strongman” image is right now. He knows the policy is wildly unpopular, but he is too terrified of the FSB to reverse it.

Authoritarian regimes always market themselves as strong and efficient, but they always eventually rot from the inside because they make the truth illegal.

Unprovoked aggression against neighbor… fine
Committing endlessly war crimes… fine
Sacrificing almost million of Russians to idiotic war… fine

Blocking access to TikTok… and this is where “people of Russia” draw the line.

Something seriously wrong with huge portion of Russians.

To be fair, 30% of Americans voting for Trump twice are not pretty sight either.